Karnataka directorate of Medial education has sanctioned Rs. 1 crore under the project of computerizing all the five teaching hospitals in Bangalore. The hospitals are Victoria, Bowring and Lady Curzon, SDS Tuberculosis and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases, Vani Vilas and Minto Ophthalmic Institute. As a pilot project, the government ensured that computerization of the SDS TB and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases was taken and based on its success; the system would be implemented at other hospitals. Come mid-October 2006, the SDS TB and RGICD will become the first paperless government hospital in the State. Bion Computers is implementing the project.

The primary objective of the computerization was that all the five government medical teaching college hospitals could be linked the directorate of medical education so that a central system in the directorate could allow access to various patient information and financial transaction in each of these hospitals at a click of a button.

According to the SDS TB and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases officials, the work from the registration to the generation of a discharge summary will be computerized by the second week of October 2006.

The hospital is connected with 18 computers and registration, patient records, billing, accounting, drugs procurement, laboratory services, indenting and medical stores are being computerized.

Moreover all medical and paramedical staff in the hospitals are being trained to use the computers and safety mechanism have been put into place so that valuable information is not tampered with.

We had computerized registration, billing and medical supplies but each section was functioning independently. But now we are networking all the sections so that there will be information flow and there will be no need to maintain manual records. Four computer operators have been sanctioned by the government for this, stated Shashidhar, Buggi, director, SDS TB and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases.

The software was recently upgraded and every month Rs 6,000 from the user charges collected from patients would be spent on maintenance of the system.

Dr Buggi said that details about the bed availability in the wards, admission, and discharge of patients would be stored in the computer. Every nurse station would have a computer and the nurse on duty would be able to check which bed was vacant ad in which ward a patient could be admitted. The system would be linked in such a way that unless the accounts for a particular patient were in order, a discharge summary would not be generated.